Four years of armored battle on the Eastern Front in the Second World War littered the battlefields with the wrecks of destroyed and disabled tanks, and Anthony Tucker-Jones’s photographic history is a fascinating guide to them. It provides a graphic record of the various types of tank deployed by the Red Army and the Wehrmacht during the largest and most destructive confrontation between mechanized armies in military history.

During the opening stages of the war the German victors regularly photographed and posed with destroyed Soviet armor. Operation Barbarossa left 17,000 smashed Soviet tanks in its wake, and the heavy and medium tanks such as the T-28, T-35, KV-1 and the T-34 proved to be a source of endless interest. Once the tide turned the wrecked and burnt-out panzers – the Mk IVs, Tigers and Panthers – were photographed by the victorious Red Army.

As well as tracing the entire course of the war on the Eastern Front through the trail of broken armor, the photographs provide a wide-ranging visual archive of the tank types of the period that will appeal to everyone who is interested in tank warfare and to modelers and wargamers in particular.

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